Results of scan on groin injury due on Tuesday but key midfielder is expected
to sit out the matches against Sunderland and West Bromwich Albion

Manchester City fear Yaya Touré, their influential midfielder, will miss at least two crucial games in a significant blow to their Premier League title challenge.

Touré is struggling with a groin injury having been substituted early in City’s defeat at Liverpool on Sunday and Manuel Pellegrini, the manager, will discover the results of a scan on the Ivory Coast international on Tuesday.

City are preparing to be without Touré for Wednesday night’s visit of Sunderland while he is also expected to miss Easter Monday’s home game against West Bromwich Albion.

It has not been discounted that he will miss the rest of the season though City are still optimistic he could return later this month.

Despite the potential absence of Touré, Pellegrini has defiantly insisted his team can still win the title in the wake of Sunday’s setback at Anfield, with seven points between them and league leaders Liverpool.

Martín Demichelis, the Argentine defender, has claimed Brendan Rodgers’s players, who have won 10 league games in a row, could still slip up as they pursue their first title since 1990.

He said: “We’re obviously not happy about the [Liverpool] result but we know we have matches ahead and you have seen in football that we can still win – they can still make mistakes.

“Hopefully we will win the rest and expect some mistakes from Liverpool. No one left the stadium feeling they were champions, and we have plenty of matches.

“When we were attacking, we knew how good they are at counter-attacking, and that is where we had a lot of problems. But their only clear chance came from our mistake, so I can only complain about how unlucky we were. We should have got the draw at least.

“Unfortunately we couldn’t bring a more positive result to our fans, but we can still bring something positive from now until the end.”

City will move to within two points of second-placed Chelsea if they defeat Championship-bound Sunderland on Wednesday while three of their remaining games are at the Etihad Stadium.

Edin Dzeko, the City forward, is convinced the title race will go to the last game in a repeat of their stirring triumph under Roberto Mancini in May 2012.

“It’s too early to say if Sunday’s result will decide where the title ends up because we still have six games to play, and Liverpool and Chelsea both have four left,” he said.

“People talk about pressure and such like, but that doesn’t really matter – just who wins the most games between now and the end of the season. I firmly believe, like the last time we won the title, that it will go right to the wire.”